society. Even Hirsh, who had been appointed by the board on March 29, 1917, following the resignation of Henry C. Rockwell, was said to have no legal standing because his appointment had taken place in New York rather than Allegheny, as required by law. Rutherford claimed to have known these facts since 1909 and to have conveyed them to Russell on more than one occasion. On July 12, Rutherford traveled to Pittsburgh and exercised his right under the society's charter to fill what he claimed were four vacancies on the board, appointing A. H. Macmillan and Pennsylvania Bible Students W. E. Spill, John A. Bohnet and George H. Fisher as directors. Rutherford called a meeting of the new board on July 17, where the directors passed a resolution expressing "hearty approval" of the actions of their president and affirming him as "the man the Lord has chosen to carry on the work that yet remains to be done." On July 31 he called a meeting of the People's Pulpit Association, a Watch Tower Society subsidiary incorporated in New York, to expel Hirsh and Hoskins as directors on the grounds that they were opposing the work of the Association. When the resolution failed to gain a majority, Rutherford exercised shareholder proxies provided for the annual meeting in New York the previous January to secure their expulsion. On August 1 the Watch Tower Society published a 24-page journal, Harvest Siftings, subtitled "The evil one again attempts to disrupt the Society", in which Rutherford stated his version of the events and explained why he had appointed the new board members. A month later the four ousted directors responded with a self-funded rebuttal of Rutherford's statement. The publication, Light After Darkness, contained a letter by Pierson, dated July 26, in which the vice-president declared he was now siding with the old board. Although he believed both sides of the conflict had displayed "a measure of wrongs", Pierson had decided Rutherford had been wrong to appoint new directors. The ousted directors' publication disputed the legality of their expulsion, stating that the clause in the Pennsylvania law prohibiting life memberships on boards had been only recently introduced and was not retroactive, exempting existing corporations from the statute. They also claimed that the Watch Tower Society's charter allowed only directors to be elected as officers, and that therefore the election of Rutherford, Van Amburgh and Pierson as